Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

 Year: 2022

Director:  Rian Johnson

Screenplay:  Rian Johnson

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista

Running Time:  139 minutes

Genre:  Mystery, comedy

May 2020:  Tech billionaire Miles Bron (Norton) invites some of his closest friends and rivals to play a murder mystery game on his private greek island.  Celebrated detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) also receives an invitation .  As the weekend progresses it becomes apparent that everyone present has motive to murder Bron, but it becomes increasingly unclear who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.

This enjoyable, lighthearted murder mystery piles on twists and laughs in roughly equal measure.  Daniel Craig reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc from writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film Knives Out (2019).  The cast, which includes a number of celebrity cameos, including Ethan Hawke, Hugh Grant, Stephen Sondheim, Yo-Yo Ma, Angela Lansbury, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Natasha Lyonne and Serena Williams, all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, particularly Edward Norton as obnoxious Elon Musk-alike "tech bro" Miles Bron, and Daniel Craig once more adopting an extraordinary Southern accent as the detective Benoit Blanc.  Among the eclectic cast,  Janelle Monáe is the standout as Bron's enigmatic former partner.  Despite a generous running time the film still manages to be consistently funny, as well as having enough twists and turns to satisfy fans of traditional murder-mysterys.  

Daniel Craig and Janelle Monáe in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Enduring Love

 Year of Release:  2004

Director:  Roger Michell

Screenplay:  Joe Penhall, based on the novel Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans, Samantha Morton, Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch

Running Time:  100 minutes

Genre:  Drama, thriller

University professor and author Joe (Craig) is having a picnic in the Oxfordshire countryside with his partner Claire (Morton) when he becomes involved with an attempt to rescue a young boy from an out of control hot air balloon, alongside several other men.  The attempt fails, and one of the men dies, although the boy ultimately lands safely.  Joe suffers a great deal of guilt over the man's death.  Later he is contacted by Jed (Ifans) one of the other would-be rescuers.  Jed has become obsessed with Joe, and is convinced that Joe is in love with him.  Initially Joe tries to gently brush Jed off, but the stalking soon  intensifies to increasingly dangerous levels.

Based on a novel by acclaimed author Ian McEwan, who is probably best known for the 2001 novel Atonement, this is really in it's basic plot a conventional psycho-thriller about stalking, but it is dressed up as an arthouse drama.  It's all very elegant and moves at a stately pace, and there are many long conversations about guilt and the nature of love (Joe lectures and writes about love and his conviction that it doesn't really exist and is just a biological impulse).  It's only really until the end that it moves fully into thriller territory.  The film doesn't really work as a thriller because there is never any feeling of threat from Jed, at least until the end.  There is never any sense that Joe is scared of Jed.  He seems to regard him at first as an irritation, and later as an annoyance.  In fact there is the sense that Joe is more likely to turn violent against his stalker than the other way around.  It's very much a respectable, serious British film, that has the lurid elements that appeal to more mainstream audiences and the somber philosophising and arthouse elements to appeal to more serious minded viewers.  The film is very well acted, with Daniel Craig in particular turning from polite, mild-mannered professor into a seething self-destructive cauldron of barely repressed rage.  Rhys Ifans makes the stalker, Jed, disturbing but also weirdly sympathetic.  Samantha Morton is good but underused as sculptor Claire, Joe's increasingly put-upon partner.  The rest of the cast is full of familiar British actors including Bill Nighy, Susan Lynch, Helen McCrory, Andrew Lincoln (from The Walking Dead (2010-2021)), Anna Maxwell Martin, Corin Redgrave, and Daniel Craig's future James Bond co-star Ben Wishaw.  Not exciting or tense enough to work as a thriller, or particularly involving as a drama, the film feels stretched even at a fairly brisk running time, but the performances are fantastic, it all looks beautiful and, despite it's flaws, it is interesting enough to see how it all turns out.

Rhys Ifans and Daniel Craig in Enduring Love
   

No Time to Die

 Year of Release: 2021

Director:  Cary Joji Fukunaga

Screenplay:  Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from a story by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Cary Joji Fukunaga, based on characters created by Ian Fleming

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Ralph Fiennes, Ana de Armas

Running Time:  163 minutes

Genre:  Action, espionage

James Bond (Craig) has retired from active service for MI6, but his domestic bliss with Madeleine Swann (Seydoux) is interrupted when he suspects her of selling him out to the evil SPECTRE organisation.  Five years later, Bond finds himself drawn into a race between MI6 and the CIA to rescue a kidnapped scientist from the clutches of SPECTRE, but finds himself in a battle to save the world from a deadly weapon that has fallen into the hands of ruthless terrorist Safin (Malek).

So we have been expecting you, Mr. Bond.  And indeed we have.  Work in the film began in early 2016, and it was originally due to be released at the end of 2019, but was delayed a few months to avoid competition with Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (2019), but was delayed a couple of times more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  In fact it seems like I have seen the trailer every time I have been to the cinema in the past two years.  Was it worth the wait?  Yes, it was worth it.  The film has all the traditional elements of classic James Bond:  glamour, exotic locations, plenty of action, humour, gadgets and a megalomaniacal villain, but it updates it to appeal to a modern audience.  The female characters are no longer just "Bond girls", there to be decoration and not much more, they are more than a match for Bond, and are the most complex, ambiguous characters.  Also supporting characters such as Q (Ben Wishaw), Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and M (Ralph Fiennes) have much bigger roles than were traditional.  This is likely to be Daniel Craig's last James Bond film, and if so, this is a perfect way to end Craig's run as 007.  The action is exciting, and, despite having a running time of almost three hours, it's well paced and the narrative keeps moving along.  Rami Malek makes a satisfactorily sinister villain.  Léa Seydoux reprises her role as the tragic Madeleine Swann from the previous Bond film Spectre (2015) and provides the film with it's heart.  Lashana Lynch is good as the new "00 agent" who acts as Bond's partner / rival and possible successor.  This mayn't be the best of the James Bond films, but it is certainly one of the best ones,  the thing is that it's hard to see where the Bond films will go from here, but it will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas in No Time to Die
  

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Year:  2011
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Steven Zaillian, based on the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Steven Berkoff, Robin Wright, Yorick van Wageningen, Joley Richardson
Running Time:  158 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, crime, drama, mystery

This is the English language film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Steig Larsson, which was first published in 2005, and was already the subject of a 2009 Swedish film.

Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) is hired by Henrik Vanger (Plummer) the wealthy, elderly patriarch of a large and powerful family, ostensibly to write his biography, but in reality to investigate the murder of his beloved neice, who disappeared almost forty years previously.  Vanger is convinced that one of the family killed her.  As he investigates, Blomkvist enlists the help of troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Mara).  Together the two begin to discover some shocking secrets about the Vanger family.  Secrets that some would kill to keep hidden.

This is a very faithful adaptation of the novel.  Visually it is very impressive, with the bleak, wintery landscapes giving the film an almost dreamlike atmosphere.  The cast are uniformly brilliant, with Rooney Mara exceptional in the difficult role of Lisbeth Salander, who is already one of the most memorable characters in modern popular fiction.  The film also manages to condense a complex and long novel into a coherent film.  The film retains the Swedish setting of the original novel, but all the dialogue is English language, with the cast basically speaking in Swedish accents, which seems slightly bizarre.  Also the film moves at a fairly sedate pace, although there are sudden bursts of violence, a couple of which are genuinely shocking and disturbing.  

However, it is a fierce and powerful piece of work, with a superb visual sense and would be worth watching just for Rooney Mara's performance alone.

Rooney Mara is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo